It's insane how bad Elon stepped in it with this guy. While I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing, he happens to publicly pick on a guy who single-handedly built one of the most well-respected branding agencies in the tech industry, and who also has debilitating muscular dystrophy.
The optics could not be worse. I mean this guy is literally in a wheel chair.
If you were a well-funded tech company looking for design help from say 2014-2020, Ueno was probably on your shortlist (they're basically the reason most company landing pages look the way they do today). The fact that twitter could not find something valuable for this guy to do reflects more on the current state of Twitter management than it does on him.
Elon did what he's done for the past decade. Can't help but play to a crowd and let the lawyers figure it out later. This is a cocktail of calling a rescue diver a pedophile, mocking all skills that aren't coders, and unnecessary cruelty when laying off workers.
If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up in Halli's DMs.
Watching Elon makes me think about the things for which a large portion of the public made fun of Jack Dorsey. Regular meditation, month-long meditation retreats and emphasis on regular exercise or alternative measures are probably needed to keep operating at that level. I know I get in a much worse mental state without physical exercise and journaling or meditation.
Reading Icelandic names like Haraldur evokes strong subconscious aura of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Curious if someone would write a novel (or a parody or a game) about Middle Earth's modern high tech corporate culture.
> If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up in Halli's DMs.
Considering there were entire articles by news outlets like the BBC just queued up and ready to go. My sense is this was premeditated. Elon is such an easy target.
> while I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing
As somebody who was a manager at Twitter (briefly; laid off in 2017 after 7 months) I want to say that this is very much a management problem, not a worker problem.
When I started there, in my initial 1:1s with my team, each told me their story of their time at Twitter. Every single one had worked on at least one project that they were excited about and made great progress on but that at the last minute got canceled by senior execs. At least one; some had more.
So I believe that the main reason Twitter had a justified reputation for low feature velocity was executive-level chaos. Dorsey was the half-time CEO from 2015-2022. When I was there, the VP Product position was jokingly called "defense against the dark arts teacher", as a new person swapped in every year or so. I'm sure it's possible to have a half-time CEO, but for that to work you need a very clear vision and an excellent executive team that is actually working as a team, neither of which I saw during my time there.
It would not surprise me at all that Twitter ,ended up with some people who became discouraged and were just biding their time. However, during my time there I never met anybody like that. Twitter was full of smart, passionate people who loved the product.
That said, if Twitter, months after Musk's takeover and after massive layoffs still has do nothing people, that is 100% Musk's fault. All the people there have passed multiple selection filters by Musk and his goons. Musk has had months to change the culture, share his vision, and build a sense of mission. In my view, he's failed comprehensively. At this point, him publicly shitting on his workers is just him displaying his lack of basic competence as a manager.
Yup, when just a simple trivial response would do.
Either no reply & cc:HR, or "Yup, HR should get on this".
With that kind of money and power, the #1 or #2 richest person in the world, you can afford to be extremely gracious and self-effacing. And it is good for your wealth.
Instead, Elon chooses to make a public show of being a smug, petty, abusive, asshat. What an impoverished emotional weakling is on display here. Almost sad and pitiful, except for his abuse of others.
> If you were a well-funded tech company looking for design help from say 2014-2020, Ueno was probably on your shortlist
What was it about Ueno's work that made it so good? I've admired it from the first time I saw Halli & Ueno's portfolio, but I've never been able to identify what it was.
I cannot understand the Stan culture for Elon. I get it for the military guys who tell you to lift and make your bed. I get it for Joe Rogan. I get it for the MMA masculinity influencers. I get it for Trump and DeSantis. I do not get it for Elon.
> "well if he's not working why is elon paying him"
> for these groups of people Elon is tied to their identity and he can do no wrong
I'm not an Elon fanboy and I'm not familiar with these events. But it seems like paying someone who isn't working isn't a great use of money. It seems reasonable to end an arrangement like that. Was that really what happened?
It's almost irrelevant whether or not he was doing anything - even if he for some reason 100% deserved to be fired, the way Elon responded was wildly unprofessional.
All Elon needed to do was to reply "thanks for bringing this to my attention, clearly the ball has been dropped somewhere. I'll make sure someone responds to your e-mail", and then take it private.
It's true of any large company. There are many people not doing anything. Simply because of the number of employees, and the manner in which large companies tend to stop focusing on outcomes.
That doesn't mean most were not doing anything, but "most" is not the word used in the comment to which yours replies.
I think that this person is more trustworthy than Musk. After reading Musk's depositions he is not a person that I would consider to be honest and forthright.
He doesn't have to work. Twitter acquired his company and the payout was structured as salary for tax reasons. Musk firing him suddenly turned that opex into capex, for no other reason than Musk has no idea what is going on in a company he runs.
I assume if you came into work and your manager says stop everything you're doing and then in the afternoon calls you into a meeting and says you're fired with cause because you aren't doing anything you would probably thank them for helping the business!
Unfortunately it doesn't matter, the market has decided that a company led by a person like this is worth many multiples of a similar company led by a regular person who would never consider doing something like this.
...in no small part because the brazen arrogance, sociopathic cruelty and shit-eating snark people like Elon possess signal them as alpha males in modern society, and people honestly think those qualities are necessary in innovators and leaders (although I suspect a lot of that is people projecting a power fantasy from their own misanthropic behavior.) That so many beta fanboys in this thread are white knighting for him is as ghastly as it is to be expected.
... and because this is Hacker News, yes I'm aware the "alpha/beta" male thing is based on a discredited model of wolf pack hierarchy but the meme was assimilated into popular culture anyway so it's true for people now even if it was never true for canines.
I chuckled at the weirdly heavy emphasis on that part too, but I think what they're getting at is that elon accused someone who's in a wheelchair of faking their disability. this isn't just carpal tunnel where it's effectively invisible and you just have to take someones word for it (which to be clear, I'm not saying is fair game to just publicly accuse people of faking on a whim)
It irks me so much that everyone calls him Elon like we’re all pals with him and he’s just one of us.
He isn’t. I find him to be an insufferable douche, he’s probably a psychopath, and he’s just a despicable human overall.
His companies are remarkable though but they’ve been built on the sweat tears blood and exploitation of so many people that I don’t think they’re respectable.
But sure let’s keep calling him Elon like he’s just everyone’s friendly neighbor or uncle.
> It's insane how bad Elon stepped in it with this guy. While I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing, he happens to publicly pick on a guy who single-handed built one of the most well-respected branding agencies in the tech industry, and who also has debilitating muscular dystrophy.
Haraldur seems like a pretty accomplished guy and I don't like what Musk did either. But none of the things you wrote about are about things Haraldur did at Twitter. Without knowing more about the situation, we're all just guessing it, but it is possible for a accomplished individual to join a company and then lose motivation and not do much.
> but it is possible for a accomplished individual to join a company and then lose motivation and not do much
Nobody deserves to be fired without communication, without HR being able to confirm if they work at the company, and then proceed to be publicly mocked on Twitter for their physical disability.
Speculating about the person's work at Twitter is beside the point. Thousands of Twitter employees have been let go, but mocking someone for their physical disability on the internet is something else entirely.
The perspective warp that happens in these comment threads is baffling. If someone posted the same scenario (getting fired without communication, then their CEO mocked their disability on Twitter) as an "Ask HN" thread, everyone would have their pitchforks out. Replace unknown CEO with Elon Musk, and suddenly commenters are doing mental gymnastics to ignore the real bad behavior and try to justify something else using speculation.
Anyone surprised at this and changing their opinion about Elon now because of Halli, should know that this is how every single employee has been treated at Twitter since the acquisition. Doesn’t matter what your political beliefs are. Doesn’t matter if you’re resentful at employees at Twitter for apparent coasting at high salaries. Worker mistreatment at Twitter is some of the worst in the modern workplace.
> You mean people being let go? There have been layoffs in ton of SV companies, complete with fake "I take full responsibility".
At least the employees of those companies knew they were fired. Read the originating message from Haraldur to Elon...he went to twitter because he had no idea whether he was employed or not. smh
This is not just somebody being let go. Publicly grilling your employee with the mocking "what would you say you do here" on Twitter is ludicrously unprofessional, following up with trash-talking him about using his disability as an excuse for not producing.
I honestly question Musk's sobriety at this point.
Surreal to me to see how many people in this thread and trying to steer the conversation towards whether or not the firing was justified based on his job performance. What the actual fuck does it matter? In what world is it okay to fire someone without communication and then publically mock them like Elon did here? I'm truly unable understand the willingness some people have to jump to the defense of billionaires.
It's not necessarily in defense of billionaires, it's because other people are just as vile as Musk and feel validated by him being vile in public. See also: Donald Trump.
Elon isn't mocking him - the employee made this public and Elon is defending his choice to fire him. It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work, because it's clear he didn't. Instead he's tweeting "Let me know if you are going to pay what you owe me?" at Elon, which is only furthering Elon's stance that this dude is looking for a payday and went to publicly smear Elon to bully him into paying out while hamming up his "I built a trillion wheelchair ramps" and other awards.
Yes he's looking for a payday, i.e. the day you get paid for the work you did. He's not looking for extra special bonus dollars, but the dollars he's contractually obligated to get paid for the work he performed while employed. Im honestly struggling to see the issue here.
>> Elon isn't mocking him.
He literally posted a meme joking about how he cant feel his legs
>> It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work.
Halli needed multiple tweets to fit in the list of major projects he worked on while at the company
To build a world-renowned web design firm based in Iceland (population 370k, barely bigger than Cincinnati, Ohio) is pretty astounding. Looking at the beautiful "coming soon" homepage [0] he presumably built for his restaurant (which is named after his mom [1]), I can see why he was well-respected in the field
> Looking at the beautiful "coming soon" homepage [0] he presumably built for his restaurant (which is named after his mom [1]), I can see why he was well-respected in the field
Its literally just a pink background for me. Not sure if I'm missing something or if that's the joke. I'm not familiar with him and assume he's a great designer. I dont understand the reference here though.
It's a landing page saying when the restaurant will open and what it will have, along with a couple of links to hiring, contact info, and social media. You have to have js enabled so it can show the fancy animations. There's no fallback for people with older browsers or noscript. Also while arrow keys and spacebar work, the page doesn't respond to pageup/pagedown or home/end.
Maybe it's a nice experience on mobile, but it's a nightmare on my laptop.
That site really doesn't play well with screen readers. When I clicked the link for the first time I was severely confused. I had to come back here to read that I had to scroll, and when I did, sometimes some new text showed up, and other times it didn't.
This is just an observation. I understand that some people love making lovely things, and that sometimes those things are at odds with being accessible to some people. But this is a real world example where I cannot access a restaurant website, even if the restaurant hasn't opened yet. So even now I'm still confused as to what's actually going on there.
Here's the few lines of actual information on the page: "Nice of you to drop by. I’ll be opening my doors in the fall of 2022 at Tryggvagata 11, in Reykjavik, Iceland. I also have a small, cozy in-house Cinema. A place for small groups to enjoy movies viewings or music performances."
There's a image of the dining area of the restaurant at the top of the page once you scroll enough. It's daylight, and it seems to be lit from the windows to the right. It's very white/beige. The room reminds me of the bridge of the Enterprise on Star Trek: TNG. There's a part in the center with pink-padded bench seats placed around an area full of plants. These tables have wooden chairs with soft-looking pink seats like the rest of the tables around the room. There's a nook thing at the back center with a shelf of pink cups against a frosted glass backing with a light behind it and a cluster of old-fashioned light bulbs with huge, bright filaments. The bulbs hang from white rods.
Is this the guy responsible for the trend of obnoxious, information sparse scrolling parallax websites? I hope he gets what he deserves (a huge payday and continued support of and from his country's excellent social safety net).
This guy is incredible, I've been following him on Twitter since his Ueno days. An amazing designer and leader. One of my favorite projects he worked on was to literally build ramps all around Iceland: https://rampur.super.site/
Looks like people mostly praise him for those ramps, his bar, his awards, and how cool he is in general. It's still not clear what he got done at his job.
A guy builds a company from scratch, has a successful exit, does extensive extra curricular philanthropy, stays on and somehow your takeaway is that he probably doesn't do anything
> I now work at Twitter where I led an innovation team that among others spearheaded Communities on the platform as well as the long awaited (and finally launched) edit button. I also tweet a lot on there.
Beautiful website. I also think this is the same guy who had to ask Musk if he was fired because HR couldn't confirm it. Maybe it was a mistake to let him ago, he seems to be pretty talented actually.
It’s one thing to decide that someone’s role is no longer necessary at a company. It’s business, things change, no role is guaranteed to exist forever.
But firing someone without communication and with HR unable to confirm it is just low. Mocking them on Twitter for their well-documented physical disability is just abhorrent.
This could have been a completely different exchange if the response was a simple “Sorry for the confusion, I’ll look into it and have HR get back to you ASAP.”
An interesting detail with this is that the purchase of Haraldur's design agency was structured as part of his salary at Twitter
> In early 2021, Haraldur sold Ueno to Twitter. In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland, he chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received. Per the agreement, he paid the second highest tax of an individual in Iceland in 2021.
Elon's focus on the work he was or wasn't doing is almost beside the point, because much of his salary was simply to pay off this debt. Now that he's been fired they'll either have to keep paying his salary anyway, or pay out the probably substantial amount he's owed as a lump sum. Haraldur has alluded to this in his tweets about getting "what he's owed" per his contract.
Allegedly he was on a do-not-fire list for this reason, but it's unclear if Elon knew about any of this before jumping on the opportunity to punch down at a subordinate.
It feels like the head of HR is asking elon for confirmation rather than having the information. In a well run company, you have institutional knowledge. In a dictatorship, all institutions are the dictator.
It’s sad but he’ll probably forever now be remembered as “that guy who got publicly fired on Twitter by Musk” rather than Iceland’s person of the year 2022 and all the great philanthropy he’s done :(
The way Elon is handling it on Twitter is uniquely bad, and could be opening Twitter up to massive discrimination liability. I would say this does actually make a top ten list.
He seems like someone I would like to work for, too. I wonder if any of his former employees are left at Twitter. I bet they wish they could follow him out.
What does your comment even mean? If I were to create an original piece of art of an famous style, would that be considered a “blatant rip-off”? For a sanity check, here’s the website of the artist that created this original illustration: https://janneiivonen.net/about
It predates Hergé. Bécassine did it two decades prior. It is so old that it will enter public domain next June (death of the artist + 70 years in France).
Readit News
The optics could not be worse. I mean this guy is literally in a wheel chair.
If you were a well-funded tech company looking for design help from say 2014-2020, Ueno was probably on your shortlist (they're basically the reason most company landing pages look the way they do today). The fact that twitter could not find something valuable for this guy to do reflects more on the current state of Twitter management than it does on him.
If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up in Halli's DMs.
I'm bit afraid what he is going to do now.
Reading Icelandic names like Haraldur evokes strong subconscious aura of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Curious if someone would write a novel (or a parody or a game) about Middle Earth's modern high tech corporate culture.
Considering there were entire articles by news outlets like the BBC just queued up and ready to go. My sense is this was premeditated. Elon is such an easy target.
As somebody who was a manager at Twitter (briefly; laid off in 2017 after 7 months) I want to say that this is very much a management problem, not a worker problem.
When I started there, in my initial 1:1s with my team, each told me their story of their time at Twitter. Every single one had worked on at least one project that they were excited about and made great progress on but that at the last minute got canceled by senior execs. At least one; some had more.
So I believe that the main reason Twitter had a justified reputation for low feature velocity was executive-level chaos. Dorsey was the half-time CEO from 2015-2022. When I was there, the VP Product position was jokingly called "defense against the dark arts teacher", as a new person swapped in every year or so. I'm sure it's possible to have a half-time CEO, but for that to work you need a very clear vision and an excellent executive team that is actually working as a team, neither of which I saw during my time there.
It would not surprise me at all that Twitter ,ended up with some people who became discouraged and were just biding their time. However, during my time there I never met anybody like that. Twitter was full of smart, passionate people who loved the product.
That said, if Twitter, months after Musk's takeover and after massive layoffs still has do nothing people, that is 100% Musk's fault. All the people there have passed multiple selection filters by Musk and his goons. Musk has had months to change the culture, share his vision, and build a sense of mission. In my view, he's failed comprehensively. At this point, him publicly shitting on his workers is just him displaying his lack of basic competence as a manager.
Either no reply & cc:HR, or "Yup, HR should get on this".
With that kind of money and power, the #1 or #2 richest person in the world, you can afford to be extremely gracious and self-effacing. And it is good for your wealth.
Instead, Elon chooses to make a public show of being a smug, petty, abusive, asshat. What an impoverished emotional weakling is on display here. Almost sad and pitiful, except for his abuse of others.
What was it about Ueno's work that made it so good? I've admired it from the first time I saw Halli & Ueno's portfolio, but I've never been able to identify what it was.
Clean and bold?
"well if he's not working why is elon paying him"
for these groups of people Elon is tied to their identity and he can do no wrong
> for these groups of people Elon is tied to their identity and he can do no wrong
I'm not an Elon fanboy and I'm not familiar with these events. But it seems like paying someone who isn't working isn't a great use of money. It seems reasonable to end an arrangement like that. Was that really what happened?
So just because he is well known, you suddenly believe a Twitter employee. But others who Elon claims to not be working, they’re probably not working?
All Elon needed to do was to reply "thanks for bringing this to my attention, clearly the ball has been dropped somewhere. I'll make sure someone responds to your e-mail", and then take it private.
That doesn't mean most were not doing anything, but "most" is not the word used in the comment to which yours replies.
... and because this is Hacker News, yes I'm aware the "alpha/beta" male thing is based on a discredited model of wolf pack hierarchy but the meme was assimilated into popular culture anyway so it's true for people now even if it was never true for canines.
I didn't know being paralyzed made you immune to criticism.
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It irks me so much that everyone calls him Elon like we’re all pals with him and he’s just one of us.
He isn’t. I find him to be an insufferable douche, he’s probably a psychopath, and he’s just a despicable human overall.
His companies are remarkable though but they’ve been built on the sweat tears blood and exploitation of so many people that I don’t think they’re respectable.
But sure let’s keep calling him Elon like he’s just everyone’s friendly neighbor or uncle.
/end rant
Haraldur seems like a pretty accomplished guy and I don't like what Musk did either. But none of the things you wrote about are about things Haraldur did at Twitter. Without knowing more about the situation, we're all just guessing it, but it is possible for a accomplished individual to join a company and then lose motivation and not do much.
Nobody deserves to be fired without communication, without HR being able to confirm if they work at the company, and then proceed to be publicly mocked on Twitter for their physical disability.
Speculating about the person's work at Twitter is beside the point. Thousands of Twitter employees have been let go, but mocking someone for their physical disability on the internet is something else entirely.
The perspective warp that happens in these comment threads is baffling. If someone posted the same scenario (getting fired without communication, then their CEO mocked their disability on Twitter) as an "Ask HN" thread, everyone would have their pitchforks out. Replace unknown CEO with Elon Musk, and suddenly commenters are doing mental gymnastics to ignore the real bad behavior and try to justify something else using speculation.
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I am not sure what to do, other than let go people, if the company is hemorrhaging money with not much to show for it.
At least the employees of those companies knew they were fired. Read the originating message from Haraldur to Elon...he went to twitter because he had no idea whether he was employed or not. smh
I'm not exactly sure what the "right" way is, but I'm pretty sure that Elon's way ain't it.
I honestly question Musk's sobriety at this point.
>> Elon isn't mocking him.
He literally posted a meme joking about how he cant feel his legs
>> It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work.
Halli needed multiple tweets to fit in the list of major projects he worked on while at the company
he posted an office space meme in response to him sarcastically.
> It's interesting how Halli doesn't actually defend that he did any work, because it's clear he didn't.
and that is a spurious reach.
Here's the tweet [0]:
"Dear @elonmusk
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?"
[0]: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481?c...
[0] https://annajona.is/
[1] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633109753890058242
Its literally just a pink background for me. Not sure if I'm missing something or if that's the joke. I'm not familiar with him and assume he's a great designer. I dont understand the reference here though.
Maybe it's a nice experience on mobile, but it's a nightmare on my laptop.
Maybe an overzealous ad blocker?
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This is just an observation. I understand that some people love making lovely things, and that sometimes those things are at odds with being accessible to some people. But this is a real world example where I cannot access a restaurant website, even if the restaurant hasn't opened yet. So even now I'm still confused as to what's actually going on there.
There's a image of the dining area of the restaurant at the top of the page once you scroll enough. It's daylight, and it seems to be lit from the windows to the right. It's very white/beige. The room reminds me of the bridge of the Enterprise on Star Trek: TNG. There's a part in the center with pink-padded bench seats placed around an area full of plants. These tables have wooden chairs with soft-looking pink seats like the rest of the tables around the room. There's a nook thing at the back center with a shelf of pink cups against a frosted glass backing with a light behind it and a cluster of old-fashioned light bulbs with huge, bright filaments. The bulbs hang from white rods.
http://www.haraldurthorleifsson.com/
But firing someone without communication and with HR unable to confirm it is just low. Mocking them on Twitter for their well-documented physical disability is just abhorrent.
This could have been a completely different exchange if the response was a simple “Sorry for the confusion, I’ll look into it and have HR get back to you ASAP.”
> In early 2021, Haraldur sold Ueno to Twitter. In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland, he chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received. Per the agreement, he paid the second highest tax of an individual in Iceland in 2021.
Elon's focus on the work he was or wasn't doing is almost beside the point, because much of his salary was simply to pay off this debt. Now that he's been fired they'll either have to keep paying his salary anyway, or pay out the probably substantial amount he's owed as a lump sum. Haraldur has alluded to this in his tweets about getting "what he's owed" per his contract.
Allegedly he was on a do-not-fire list for this reason, but it's unclear if Elon knew about any of this before jumping on the opportunity to punch down at a subordinate.
IANAL, but I believe this is also highly illegal.
I agree, but we've allowed our upper class to do this since November 26, 2015.
https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481
https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632947160416149504
https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082707835080705
Thread on person of the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35056098
Thread on Twitter saga: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35055839
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I suspect many mistakes have been made. This isn't even anywhere near the Top Ten.
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I saw that site and my first thought was "wow I suck at web design". My second thought was “wow this guy's work is inspiring”.
I'm generally unaware of the drama between he and Elon, and frankly I don't really care. I'm glad our world has them both.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire